Here in the U.S., many of us celebrate Thanksgiving tomorrow. It’s a hard day for many because of the fraught history of slaughter and colonization associated with the day, because of the grief some of us experience because of someone missing, because of the loneliness many will experience. As a writer – as a human being who has found that the whole truth is the best way – I want to hold all of these things in this day and just be with them. All of this makes me richer.

So tomorrow and throughout this upcoming holiday season, I hope you are able to hold the pain – yours and others – and I hope you are able to find the joy, too.

Happy, Hard Thanksgiving, Everyone.

Today, I had planned to post the financials of my latest book launch forLove Letters to Writers so that you all could see hard numbers about a very low-key launch, but I wanted to have a bit more time to gather sales’ figures, especially with the big shopping days of this weekend. So I’ll be sharing that information next week. Thanks for your patience.

Lately, by sheer happenstance, I’ve been reading novels about bookish folks or bookish places. I just finished Nicole Yoon’s lovely YA novel, Everything, Everything,* and I’m in the midst of Katherine Reay’s The Bronte Plot.* Both are about women who love books and who come to know themselves through the pages of other’s writing.

I am much like those women because, in many ways, books are the way I have most come to understand the world.

So for this holiday season, I’ve decided to read books about books, and I’d love both your recommendations and your company. It feels like a good, quiet, healing thing for me to undertake in these busy holiday weeks – to hunker down with classics writ fresh in new titles, to spend time with people who adore the way we can venture, escape, discover in the pages of someone’s story.

If you’d like to join me, I’d welcome the company. We can share titles over on Goodreads if you’d like. And if you have recommendations for titles, please let me know in the comments here, over on Facebook, or through Twitter. I plan to get a LOT of reading done over the next six weeks, and I could use all the companionship and recommendations I can get.

*Please note that these links are affiliate links, so if you click on them and then make a purchase, I get a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thanks.

We go up to heaven and down to hell a dozen times a day – at least, I do. And the discipline of work provides an exercise bar, so that the wild, irrational motions of the soul become formal and creative.

– May Sarton in Journal of a Solitude

Seated in the corner of my office, I close the internet window on my laptop and hunker down to write. With just a half hour left before I leave to meet a friend for lunch, I ought to have enough time to squeeze in my goal of 500 words for the day.

I need to write something for the week’s blog post and, hopefully, for my newsletter too. Neither need to be very long. The problem, though, as I begin, is that, well, I don’t know where to begin. I don’t have a story to tell, not even the faintest glimmer of an idea to explore. I had a couple of ideas flitting around last week but failed to capture them, and now one is stale, like bread left out overnight, and the other is shrouded in fog too dense to be explored in this limited amount of time.

Still, I close the internet, sit in my chair, and begin. I write 100 words or so about not knowing what to write – this is an old trick of many writers wanting simply to get their fingers started. I eke out a few creaky sentences about the difficulty of committing this time to writing when there’re so many more concrete tasks I could be knocking off my to-do list. I write about my struggle with the awareness that time committed to words on the page will not necessarily produce a useable product.

Then, my words peter out. Twenty minutes to go.

Hoping for a little positive juju, I reach past the laptop and light my oil lamp for the first time in weeks, gently wiping accumulated dust from its glossy blue ceramic sides. I observe the rising smoke, the smell of the lit match and wonder, “Is there something there to write about?” The answer is quick and simple: “No.”

Stumped, I let my eyes wander around my studio. My painting space is filled with happy turquoise and yellow paints, with the brushes and pens standing in brightly colored containers. Further down on the counter top sits an overgrown Peace Lily and a slowly dying prayer plant. (Symbolic? I hope not.) Drawn by the need for productivity, stuck in my battle with words, I leave my chair and beginning packing books for my upcoming retreat.

Then, I pause for a while, skimming Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet, which I’ve not read since seminary.

Rilke writes to his young, eager, writing friend:

It is clear we must embrace struggle. Every living thing conforms to it. Everything in nature grows and struggles in its own way, establishing its own identity, insisting on it at all cost, against all resistance. We can be sure of very little, but the need to court struggle is a surety that will not leave us.

This, I think, is something I can use for my retreat.

I return to my chair, open my lap top, find the necessary file, and type in the quote. Productivity stalls again, and I take a sip of quickly cooling tea. The dog snores, curled in her chair across from me – her concerns with productivity nonexistent. The lamp’s flame burns on and, again, I scan the room looking for inspiration. Some inward part of me gently taps each sight, each feeling, like a farmer thumping watermelons, listening for the subtle sound that indicates ripeness; I’m looking for that secret door behind which inspiration hides.

I look at the clock, fifteen more minutes to go.

I ponder Rilke’s advice: “We must embrace struggle.” I turn my eye to my own inward struggle here in this room, in this chair, with no real idea what to write and a small and growing pile of words on the page that confirm it.

What, I wonder, will the product of this time, this commitment to persevere, be, if not a blog post or a newsletter? What will come of the discipline that ties me to this chair with my feet flat on the ground, my back supported by a pillow? Is it possible that other things are being born in this time, this space, this commitment? And, last, but most important to my mind, does it matter if I never know?

At last, I begin to write into the question, into the struggle, into the hunch that this perseverance is itself a product – not an end, but a means that will bear fruit in time and places I cannot yet image. I push past the low-hanging fruit of productivity and embrace the struggle, and the struggle itself gives me these words.

Kelly Chripczuk is a Writer, Speaker, and Spiritual Director who writes regularly at thiscontemplativelife.org. She works and plays on a small farm in Central PA, which she shares with a gaggle of kids and pets and one very patient husband.

It’s something concrete, controllable. All those squiggles of commas and subject-verb agreement choices. There is a right answer when it comes to grammar and mechanics, and that is comforting in the wild, never-perfect, no-right-way world of writing.

It’s so comforting in fact that many a writer has been seduced into thinking that if they can just get the spelling, the grammar, the punctuation right, then their piece is good, perfect even. Thankfully, correctness says very little about the value of a piece of writing. After all, you can have a grammatically-perfect text that says absolutely nothing of value.

I cannot tell you how many books I read for clients who say, “I’ve worked really hard to make this book as good as it can be,” and when probed say, “I’ve gotten out all the grammatical and spelling mistakes” by way of explanation for “as good as it can be.” More often than note, these books are seriously flawed in terms of plot or structure or something else far more fundamental, even if they are grammatically clean. These authors have made the mistake of focusing on the minor details before they worked out their larger ideas more fully. Sadly, after all that detail work, many writers are not willing to do the hard, large-scale revisions that are actually required to make their book the strong piece of writing that they want it to be. As Dean Wesley Smith says in his wise book, Stages of a Fiction Writer, the writer who focuses here is probably in the beginning states of his writing career.*

Here’s the challenge then, friends. We have to let the grammar concerns go until the very, very last stage of the writing process. We have to just ignore the underlines in MS Word. We have to put up with the beta readers who want to point out all the typos (even though we’ve told them proofreading will come later). We have to tolerate a bit of imperfection at the word level so that we can strive for stronger, clearer, more powerful writing overall.

So here’s my recommendation to you – don’t even think about grammar, punctuation, or mechanics until at least the second draft, and even then, don’t think about it much. Instead, working on telling an amazing story, conveying deep truth, catching the reader deep in the web of your words – you can get all the words correct later. That part of the writing process – necessary though it is – can wait.

Instead, put your hot, wild energy of your first draft into going deep into yourself and finding the ranging, beautiful, rich images, ideas, and feelings you have on the page. You can contain them with grammar later, but for now, they need to roam free. Think of them as the powerful bison that used to cover the American plains – let them wander and thunder with their might.

One of my mother’s favorite Biblical ideas was the idea of Ebenezer – “This far the Lord hath carried you.” In fact, her friend cross-stitched that word for her in a beautiful piece. So today, Kaitlin Curtice’s words on Ebenezer feel so important for us as people, for us as writers. We live in heavy hard times (maybe they are all heavy and hard?), and we must trust that the part of the journey we have completed – be it in writing or in living – has gotten us just where we need to be.

(Please note – If the Christian tradition isn’t one out of which you operate, I hope you will translate Kaitlin’s words to whatever sense of the universe makes the most sense to you, my friends.)

How can you seek God if he’s already here? It’s like standing in the ocean and crying out, “I want to get wet.” You want to get over the line to God. It turns out he was always there. —Deepak Chopra

There are mentions in the bible of the word “Ebenezer,” a sign that in an experience we have known and seen God. Things have been feeling heavy around here lately, do you sense that? It’s not just America, either. It’s not just our neck of the woods, our corner of the world. Things feel like they are on fire, like we’re going through birthing pains. It feels difficult and hard to breathe. We are relying on self-care and trying to gather up compassion for others as best we can.

So our Ebenezers are the moments, the spaces, sometimes the objects that speak to us, that reach us, that carry us and remind us that we are not alone. I have had Ebenezers in the shape of my children’s words toward me, in prayer, in small rocks that I’ve found in the forest. Ebenzers have been leaves falling from trees, quiet movement of rivers or lakes, or moments of quiet. Ebenezers are all around us if we look hard enough.

On November 7th, my book Glory Happening: Finding the Divine in Everyday Places * releases into the world. I wrote this book of 50 stories and prayers to reflect on the idea of glory—of extreme beauty—in our everyday circumstances. My hope is that by reading my stories, you find your own. One of these stories is about Ebenezers. It’s about stopping to take in a moment, to be fully present, and then to go back out into the world refreshed.

I believe it’s what we need most right now. We are exhausted people, and to care for ourselves and each other, we have to stay tethered to what is good, to what fills and restores us. Then, we are ready to go back out into the world and do the good work we are called to.

Ebenezers

When you leave a meaningful experience, or you’re changed, or you see a new side of life that you weren’t aware of before, it’s only appropriate that you take from it an Ebenezer, a sign that God was there in your midst.

We met Mike and Cathy, a couple older than we were but also experiencing their first conference with International Justice Mission. We became instant friends, and over that short weekend became as close as children and their parents. A few years later, they visited us when I was full-bellied pregnant, and we ate pizza and talked about the mystery of God that pulls people to each other and deeper into a goodness that cannot be fully understood.

I went to visit Cathy and Mike one weekend in September, right before my birthday, and right before the fall equinox. In Minnesota, the air was already turning crisp and people were wearing their fall layers, preparing themselves for the coming northern winter.

We attended a conference that weekend called Why Christian?, the first of its kind. We heard women speak about the church, about the Jesus they knew who bled with the brokenhearted and used spit and dirt to heal. He was the Jesus who used anyone and everyone to love, to be the church, to give life to the weary.

And I realized that weekend that he was also the type of guy who might grab a rock or two as an Ebenezer, just like Cathy does. He’s one who remembers, who counts the sacredness of human experience as something to be honored.

When we came back to the house from the conference, I found a pile of Ebenezers on a table right by the back porch. You only know if you stoop down and look closely that the rocks are from all over the world. Her Ebenezers. I ran my fingers over the names marked on each one, places she’s visited, spaces in which she has experienced and known God.

London.

Honduras.

California.

Greece.

New Zealand.

Written in permanent marker on the faces of the stones. They are forever reminders of experiences, of people and places, stories of glory. Three days later, I was on a plane headed back to Georgia. The cool air was evaporating with every lift in altitude, and I knew it—I knew I needed something to hold on to, something to remind me, some piece of that holy experience. But I’d forgotten to grab a Minnesota rock. I’d forgotten before the plane was up in the air and I was untethered.

What I had was a plane ticket home and a voucher for a free drink. I ordered a Heineken, sat back with my journal and pen, and remembered. I looked at that can, that tiny tower of aluminum that reminded me of who I was just three days before the trip, and who I’d suddenly become. A few days earlier, I’d never flown by myself before. A few days earlier, I’d never gone on a trip alone with the expectation of meeting God in a new way. Now, I was seeing something new in myself. I was seeing that maybe God was doing something new inside of me, another side of Mystery that I hadn’t seen before. I knew things were different, because before that moment I would have never considered buying a Heineken on a plane without a full dinner first. Instead, I had a pack of peanuts and trusted the voice of God to lead me into something new, even though I didn’t understand it.

I sat back and took a lot of deep breaths and marked the air in which I was flying with my own reminder, my own Ebenezer—here in this space I have seen and known God.

Jesus,

I want to know you,

and I want to remember knowing you.

If I can take pieces of my life and forge them into bits of remembering,

*This link is an affiliate link, which means if you follow it and then order on Amazon, I get a small commission at no extra cost to you. So thanks.

The amazing group of people that is my launch team for Love Letters to Writers is going strong, and we’d love to have you join us. Join us on Facebook or message me at [email protected] to join the email team. Thanks.

Testimonials

The manuscript review Andi provided was thorough, punctual, and a great value. Not only did she find key points for revision, but she provided encouragement, and following the review offered further advice about the writing process. After this last revision I’ve been able to query agents with improved confidence. Thanks, Andi!

Lynn Sikkink

“Andrea helped me revise a lot of my work. She was a great editor who worked patiently with me and really tried to understand what I was trying to communicate. She is a definite hire!”

“Andi was a great help in preparing my resume for distribution. While I greatly appreciate her writing skills, I was worried that she would not have the ‘business’ perspective that I needed. That worry went unfounded and Andi provided both an analytical and literary perspective to the review process that made my resume much stronger.”

Testimonials

The manuscript review Andi provided was thorough, punctual, and a great value. Not only did she find key points for revision, but she provided encouragement, and following the review offered further advice about the writing process. After this last revision I’ve been able to query agents with improved confidence. Thanks, Andi!

Lynn Sikkink

“Andrea helped me revise a lot of my work. She was a great editor who worked patiently with me and really tried to understand what I was trying to communicate. She is a definite hire!”

“Andi was a great help in preparing my resume for distribution. While I greatly appreciate her writing skills, I was worried that she would not have the ‘business’ perspective that I needed. That worry went unfounded and Andi provided both an analytical and literary perspective to the review process that made my resume much stronger.”